Ruth Chawngthu
2024 was quite a year, to say the least! We witnessed multiple genocides and chaos fuelled by capitalistic demands being broadcast on social media. On our phones, we saw headless children in Palestine, mass graves in Congo due to the demand for “blood minerals,” brutality and deaths in Manipur, atrocities against minorities and bahujans, and the rise of far-right populism funded by billionaires around the globe.
By “we,” I include people like myself and you, the reader, who, by virtue of our positions, can afford to stand as witnesses to these events, more separated from their immediate effects.
It is true that the world has experienced the depravity of our fellow human beings to varying degrees in the past. However, these past few years, with increased internet connectivity and affordability of smartphones, we witnessed the horrifying experiences of people from both other parts of the world and our own country in real time, and our leaders could no longer disguise the debauchery. In 2024, we witnessed our own system’s complicity in Manipur’s unrest, an unrest that has been ongoing for more than a year. We also witnessed international bodies set up by the Western world, which we were led to believe would keep a check on the “balance of power,” doing next to nothing in response to the genocide and settler colonialism that Palestinians have endured for decades!
By witnessing these atrocities on our screens, we were faced with the question: if we, the ones witnessing these events, were ever subjected to the same experiences, who would be there to save us? We saw how hegemonic powers “manufacture consent,” reminding us that we are all connected to each other and to our environment in ways we can’t ignore.
The Terror of Techno-Capitalism and a Disconnected Society
The same tool that is used as a symbol of rationality and progress, that is, technology, which has been used to control nature, has also reinforced power hierarchies, systemic inequalities, and social domination. The constant blasts of content—TikTok, Reels, and Shorts—designed to deliver endless short-form content, pair perfectly with the AI slop content creation factories, the human tendency toward escapism, and the system’s requirement for workers who do not agitate. These quick consumption algorithms, designed to deliver endless instant gratification, are pushing us toward fragmented connections with our lived reality.
The same goes for the increased use of bots by PR firms and political establishments to control the narrative. If you go on Twitter (now renamed X by Elon Musk) and see a hit tweet, it is highly likely that you will stumble across Indian bot accounts that copy and paste other humans’ replies to the said tweet thread. Am I suggesting that accounts like these have anything to do with how online discourse is controlled by the ruling government? Maybe, maybe not.
As Ambedkar warned us, unchecked capitalism has indeed created a rabid techno-capitalist system where democracy is dying an agonising death, and workers are reduced to replaceable cogs. Workplaces have grown more hostile and alienating, with many of us working with the knowledge that we’re just one of hundreds or thousands of employees tied to the machines. HR and leadership too now seem to solely rely on ChatGPT copy/paste to communicate in e-mails. With the rise in inhumane workplaces, which has led to the deaths of office workers, and exploitation that has led to the deaths of three workers each day in our factories, I find the fact that a 70-hour work week is even up for discussion to be fricking ridiculous! Equally ridiculous are LinkedIn influencers and our peers who are pushing the idea that we must lock in and overwork ourselves or adopt the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) strategy to escape the rat race at the cost of our humanity.
Meanwhile, media outlets are also feeding our exhaustion and polarisation with rage-bait and clickbait headlines that flood our “discover” pages every morning. I do not completely blame them.They are reacting to the demands of their workplaces to churn out sensational word salad content that sells clicks and views, but at the same time, I cannot fully absolve them because we all have free will and an integrity that we owe to ourselves. Let’s say I loathe them for betraying themselves and their peers.
None of this is normal! It’s absurd and antisocial!
What makes us human—our connection to nature, empathy, cooperation, negotiation, and communication—feels increasingly distant or drowned out no matter which part of the political spectrum you are at (please note: I do not mean we should all just hold hands with harmful ideologies and sing Kumbaya!).
It is no coincidence that in 2024, Moo Deng, the whimsical and ungovernable pygmy hippo, captured widespread popularity. So did Luigi Mangione, who is now hailed as a saint by victims of the health insurance industry. It is also no coincidence that terms like “brainrot” became Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. Other dictionaries’ “word of the year” choices, too, point toward the mass anxiety, coping mechanisms, and lethargy that people are facing.
As a result of all these co-occurring realities, we are doomscrolling, experimenting with, and finding humour in the absurdity of our current times.
Slop and Nostalgia as Trends and Symptoms of Alienation
How horrifyingly ironic is it that Coca-Cola made an AI-generated advertisement for Christmas, showing polar bears in the North Pole when generating one image takes as much energy as fully charging our smartphones! Under such systems of unchecked innovations, the lingo and cultural trends for each generation have become more and more absurd and detached, which has led us to skibidi toilet and the existential question of Chat, is this real? in 2024.
Trends in the form of culture, design, mass media, literature, art, or otherwise cannot be separated from the socioeconomic, political, and cultural context of our current times. In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), for example, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that culture and mass media play a vital role in reinforcing an unequal system. They explain that the “culture industry,” a mechanism that produces media, entertainment, and consumerism, distracts the masses from recognising the true power structures that exist in society. This distraction makes it easier for the elites to maintain their dominance and sustain the inequalities they have created, preventing critical reflection and agitation.
As AI continues to evolve, expect slop content to become even more pervasive while the earth boils. Those who enjoy AI slop will continue to interact with it, while those who are exhausted by AI slop will consume human-created slop in order to cope with the absurdity of a sick society that’s gnawing at its own flesh. Now don’t get me wrong; I am not saying that slop is good or bad but that slop is a reflection of the “culture industry”. Nevertheless, the popularity of slop doesn’t mean we have to submit to expressions or structures generated by a machine; it can also be revolutionary, human, emotional, co-creative, and meaningful.
In the same sense, nostalgia sells when current realities don’t make sense to the human psyche. In this fast-paced, technologically advanced world, and in some sense, technologically controlled world, where micro-trends and consumerism dictate what is cool, we yearn for simpler times, which is why we have developed “nowstalgia.” From around the 2020s, design styles went back to the Y2K era, where our relationship with technology was more limited and we had more dominance over it. Digital cameras, frutiger aero, blobjects, baggy clothes, chrome, corecore, pixel art, and cyber motifs have dominated the contemporary zeitgeist as they offer an aesthetic refuge.
Existing alongside this, there is also a rise in cultural conservatism among the new generation. This manifests itself in the form of the popularity of influencers like Andrew Tate and the rise of openly casteist figureheads. While I’m not denying that these movements carry dangerous ideologies, their response can be seen as a reactionary retreat. Abandoned by an oppressive system that promises them power but only delivers stagnation, they resort to pushing those they deem “intrinsically inferior” down in a desperate effort to maintain their position.
As the world becomes more unreal, the past offers a sanctuary. Therefore, nostalgia in the form of retro aesthetics, binary gender roles, and an idealised past where people imagine themselves as dominating forces will continue as a cultural trend.
Overcoming Alienation from Our ‘Self’ and Others
The blame should not be on the individuals consuming these forms of content; it is just the state of the reality we are living in. In the horrifying context of this reality, the trend of slop and nostalgia are our human responses to a system that demands more of us than we can give.
But we must hold onto the hope that similar realities—this same world of absurdity, exploitation, and alienation—is the one that gave rise to art movements like Surrealism and Dadaism, direct action efforts such as the eight-hour workday movements, tribal revolts against colonialism, and Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmriti. Hope arises from our ability to understand the system and respond passionately, even when it feels impenetrable.
We must remember that even the most entrenched systems of power can be disrupted through creative, expressive, agitated, and organised engagement. Therefore, we CAN cultivate the trend of SLOP and NOSTALGIA to inject critical consciousness among the masses. We can start by co-opting slop content and absurd humour to counter the systems that produce it. Nostalgia too, can be recontextualised to evoke memories of progressive socio-cultural movements of the past, encouraging us to reconnect with each other for collective action. In a “society of the spectacle,” where we are disconnected from our own authentic reality and relationships, controlled by commodified images and media, subverting slop and nostalgia might be the most ironic yet easiest way to spark a counter-narrative. I am not suggesting that this should be an end in itself.
Perhaps if we go back and consult the philosophies of our ancestors, we may find our way back to each other and to our “self.” For example, in order to overcome our own alienation from others, I find it might be productive to live by the Mizo philosophy of “tlawmngaihna,” or the practice of altruism without expecting anything in return and, in some cases, self-denial. Perhaps we can use it to challenge the commodification of human relationships and to approach each other with empathy and an understanding that we are all inextricably linked in this world, that our behaviour towards others also affects the broader social and ecological systems we inhabit. It is my belief that once we recognise our existence as a puny part of larger systems, we can also find our way back to our “self.”
I mention this because of the fact that alienation is rampant in progressive circles. For example, during the CAA protests, indigenous communities from the Northeast were quickly vilified as xenophobic and Islamophobic in mainland progressive circles simply because our stance was rooted in a desire to protect our land and culture from the encroachment of settler colonialism—a concern that was sidelined in favour of more dominant narratives. Similarly, in our democratic elections, marginalised identity-based parties are quickly blamed for “sabotaging” the dominant progressive cause, with their self-assertions being dismissed as divisive.
Empathy and nuance cease to exist when we keep on trying to prove our moral purity to ourselves and others. There has to be a baseline of equality, of trying to understand the context that shapes human perspectives and behaviour. I hope I do not make myself sound like we should tolerate harmful hegemony, as that is not my intention.
Beyond these techniques I’ve proposed, I invite you, dear reader, to think about how you can transform these trends and social challenges into something emancipatory and cathartic for yourself and those around you.
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Ruth Chawngthu is a Social Design practitioner with over six years of experience within the social sector, encompassing the fields of gender and sexuality, education, and constitutional awareness. She wants you to know that although she enjoys yelling in her writings, she can be trusted with your passwords.
